Albanian students revolt over tuition costs

TIRANA: Thousands of Albanian university students took to Tirana’s streets on Tuesday for their biggest show of strength yet in a protest movement demanding lower tuition fees and more investment in public education.

The protests, which kicked off last week, are the biggest mobilisation of university students since demonstrations in 1990 against the former communist regime, according to local media. "Our demands are not negotiable, the government must accept them or we will radicalise our movement," Ilir Curri, a 21-year-old student from Shkodra University in the north, told AFP.

Public university tuition fees range from 160 to 2,560 euros annually in Albania, a poor country where the average salary is about 350 euros. The students are also demanding a bigger education budget, better campus facilities and more rigorous vetting of professors.

On Tuesday the students, joined by several hundred high schoolers, blew on vuvuzelas and hurled eggs at the education ministry, chanting: "Lower costs", "We want work, education" and "We are united, but politics wants to divide us".

"Our demonstration is not political, our demands are only economic," said Arben Mali, an economics student from Vlora in the south. The students have so far refused Prime Minister Edi Rama’s offers of dialogue. On Tuesday he again urged them on Facebook to "build a bridge of communication with the government".

Speaking into a megaphone, 22-year-old social science student Aida Ceka said the prime minister "can join us to discuss our problems here." Some 110,000 students are enrolled in Albania’s public universities. But huge numbers of young people -- one in three -- end up unemployed, while many join a mass exodus abroad.

Lufti Dervishi, a journalist and political analyst, said the "apolitical protest" could morph into a broader "movement against the arrogance and indifference of those in power to social realities".